1. I love the holidays! They remind me that tradition means something and that new traditions are essential for creating new memories.

2. Basketball provides lots of life lessons for me.

3. I may be addicted to social media. Determining boundaries has proven to be difficult.

4. Emotion can be your worst enemy or your best friend and sometimes it’s one disguised as the other.

5. Learning and Mentoring go hand in hand. Keeping what you learn to yourself is arrogant and self serving.

6. I haven’t written a song in 15+ years. Disappointing

7. “If you build it, they will come” is not a biblical concept, neither is “God helps those who help themselves”. Both are quotes, one from a movie the other from a founding father.

8.The Matrix was a revolutionary Movie… to bad the sequels were not. A lesson we could all learn from.

9. The experiences God used to change our lives will not be the same experiences He uses to change the lives of those around us. We are not called to recreate for others what God created for us.

10. My life is a musical.

11. Only God can change your life. No church, religion, government or person can change your existence, no matter what they promise. No they can’t.

12. I have many pet peeves… most of which are things I hate about myself.

13. Exaggeration is just a rationalization for lying.

14. I need Jesus as much as anyone.

15. To ignore any one part of the Gospel is to ignore the whole.

16. You cannot claim to follow Christ and reject His body. Quit pretending that you can. If you are not a part of a church body find one or finally admit you just hate the fact that Christ died for all the people you can’t stand.

17. When we are in the worst economic crises since the great depression, discourage your wife from wearing the dress made with real sterling silver.

18. When God invests in you, make sure you provide a good return on His investment.

19. I love my job but it can be very hard at times.

20. Love God more than you love your spouse, love your spouse more than you love your kids and love your kids more than you love anything left in life. Not the other way around.

21. Creativity is.

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BREAKFAST! It’s meaning is deeper than just the first meal in the morning. It actually signifies the end of a prolonged period without eating or fasting. It literally means to break your fast. Since fasting can be abstaining from more than just food I decided early this month to fast from blogging. Today is my blog breakfast! Twisted logic I know but you get the meaning I am sure.

Mad props this week goes out to my boy Wes Schaefer.

Since high school Wes has dealt with one addiction after another. Each new addiction would eventually leave him wanting more than the drugs had to offer. After searching for a “high” bigger and better than the last one, Wes eventually found himself addicted to Meth and ultimately close to destroying his own life. With the help of his family, friends and church, Wes entered a drug rehabilitation facility and one year later stood before those same people and proclaimed God’s victory in his life. You can see him in this video holding up a sign that says “Addicted to Meth” and then “Clean And Sober! & Forgiven”.

His sign was ginormous and rightfully so. God had done a major work in his life. Afterwards Wes sent me a text thanking me for asking him to participate in the event and wrote “That was a better high than any drug had ever given me”. Wes had experienced the life changing power of the Gospel and it was powerful to witness.

For most people this would be enough. Enough because their lives were changed by God and they were now free to go about living their lives, building their careers, raising families and going to church. This has not been the case for Wes. Wes recognizes the power of God to change his life. He understood the power of addiction that he was under was significant but that God’s power was greater and as a result, he wants everyone to experience that same saving power in their own lives. Now Wes is actively sharing the power of God with others. He recently hosted an event at the church building to help raise awareness about the destructive nature of Meth addiction and is constantly on the lookout for ways to share the Gospel with people who are far from God.

So Mad Prop’s to Wes. He is exhibiting the true nature of the Christ. He knows first hand the power of the Gospel and desires to share its life changing power with others. He is an inspiration to me and many others around him. I can’t wait to see what God does with him next…

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God has been working me over lately. One of the big lessons He has taught me over the past several weeks is that “discipline” is not just a form of punishment.

This idea was a new revelation to me. After all, “discipline” is a corrective action you take against a person who has done something wrong, or so I thought. I have always understood the premise of discipline as a habit in my mind but somewhere in the recesses of my brain the connection was never made between my mind and my character.

Discipline, I have discovered, is a habit of action that adds value to our character. Many of us lack discipline both spiritual and physical and the result tends to be disastrous. I have so much more to learn in this area, so much more to understand. I don’t know how long it will take or what is yet to be learned but I do know that by the grace of God, He has surrounded me with people who are helping me little by little become more disciplined in both my personal and professional life. I thank God for the people God has placed in my life that constantly pour into my soul the value of discipline.

I also know God has both saved me and redeemed me and that through Him all things are possible. I am a new creation and everyday God blesses me with a new day to become better than I was the day before. Each day brings a new challenge and a new opportunity to add value to my character by becoming more disciplined. I hope one day I can become a person of substantial discipline and deeper character though I fear I it will be one of those things I struggle with for a while. Its hard to break 33 years of habit… but that’s where discipline comes in.

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I have watched it on youtube least 50 times. The first time was moving, the second time I noticed some things I missed the first time and so on. So when my production team talked about the Cardboard Testimony video and possibly using it in one of our services, I wasn’t sure it would work. We talked around it for several minutes. We discussed several ways to keep it fresh and unique to our congregation. Once we landed on an idea we sold out to it. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. I hoped it would be a good thing for our people and really felt it would have some amount of success. But what we experienced Sunday far surpassed anything I could have ever imagined. What we witnessed was one of the most powerful events in the 100 year history of our congregation. God showed up in a way that had our church completely in awe of His saving grace and power.

It happened because people were courageous enough to bear their souls to their church family. It is truly amazing when we see God’s power change someone from the inside out. This leads me to my question of the week: